Wednesday, May 07, 2008

What a day yesterday was. I had to get up in the morning to take a five-page essay exam, then I had to go to a funeral, then I had a heavy workload of games to cover for Rotoworld which kept me busy until about 1 a.m. Needless to say, I didn't have a whole lot of time or motivation to write about a debacle of a game in which the Twins came within two outs of being no-hit by Gavin Floyd.

Floyd, owner of a 5.83 career ERA prior last night's game, was mysteriously having a very successful year in spite of an even strikeout-to-walk ratio and a ground ball percentage of only 32.6. His success against the Twins last night is nothing totally new -- he held the Tigers to one hit over 7 1/3 innings in one outing early this season, and held the Orioles to two hits over six innings in another start. Yet, all signs pointed to imminent collapse for Floyd. His FIP of 5.18 belied his actual ERA of 3.16. His DER was an off-the-charts .835. Put simply, almost every advanced statistic suggested that Floyd had been extremely lucky this season. His luck continued last night, although fortunately for the good of our sanity, it ran out when Joe Mauer cracked a double into the gap in left-center with one out in the ninth inning.

The Twins offense showed some serious signs of awakening in Detroit this weekend, but last night was probably the sleepiest they've looked all year. That's fairly typical of this team, and really I should know better than to get lulled into a false sense of security by a few strong games.

One other thing I'd like to mention. Last year, the 7-9 spots in the Twins batting order were really bad. So bad, some will recall, that I actually added a "Bottom of the Barrel" feature to the sidebar which tracked the statistical ineptitude from those three combined lineup positions over a period of time. One of the biggest reasons that I figured the Twins offense was a lock to improve this year was because I figured there was no way they could fail to improve in those three spots. And yet, here are the hitting lines of the players who filled the 7-9 spots in the Twins order last night as of this morning: